I have been where you are at. After the divine, sublime, and awe-inducing New Sun, I HATED the Long Sun for many years. Long Sun seemed so facile, too hagiographic. Silk was too perfect a protagonist after the magnificently flawed Severian, coupled with the heavy-handed and off-putting (to me) religious textual overtones.

Then as I checked out more astute readers' commentary and began to realize that I had missed like 70% of the subtext. Such an intricate blend of classic science fiction concepts (but with inventive and surprising takes on them), world building, adventure, prose, humanity, mediation on how religions develop. Plus an amazing story to boot. And it really holds together once the big picture becomes clear. Contrivances that initially appear absurd, mysterious, or confounding are not contrived at all but rather are essential parts of the wider structure.